If someone asked me to sit down and write up a list of problems you’d face when freelancing or starting your own business, I would be writing all day. The problems that you face are almost never ending, but that needn’t discourage you. You may find that you have issues with clients that can vary from lack of payment to lack of clarity with their assignments. You may have problems with your team, that may include everything from coaching on business etiquette to making sure they are enthusiastic about sharpening their skills. Then there are technical problems: something goes wrong with your website or a software program you’ve raved about and it seems to shut you down. So what do you do when problems arise?
Many of us tend to rush to solve the problem right away. I use the word “us” because I’m definitely including myself. While this works wonders for some problems, when it comes to most problems: “Rushing” is the main ingredient in a recipe for disaster (I made that up 🙂 LOL if you’re my Twitter friend, you’ll see me tweet that out sometime today). I’ll use the analogy of health, which is a passion of mine. If you start to get a dull ache or pain in the shoulders or arms and you’ve not bruised yourself and are up in age, you may chalk it up to arthritis and rush to get medicine to dull the pain. But if you sit and think a bit, you’ll wonder what causes arthritic pain? The answer is typically inflammation and then take a bit more time to think about what causes inflammation…typically food that is not good for us. So with the time you took to gain knowledge and not “rush” to mask/solve the problem, you could prevent it from happening again. The same is true in business! Here’s a tip to prevent “rushing” through your problems.
- Take a moment to find out why the problem happened in the first place. Let’s use the examples given in the first paragraph:
- is the client having financial problems and therefore can’t pay you or is this a regular occurrence?
- did you hire a team member in a hasty manner before testing out his or her business etiquette and work ethic?
- did you jump on the software bandwagon just because someone you respect recommended it, although it’s not been thoroughly tested?
Taking time to assess why problems happen in your business, instead of merely rushing to fix them, will help you prevent them from happening in the future. I’d love to know about a problem you solved by taking a minute to examine the issue, please leave your comments below and I’ll respond to everyone personally! 🙂
This is Shilonda Downing, signing out for Virtual Work Team LLC!
I think rushing only leads to mistakes, misunderstandings, and misuse of valuable time trying to re-assess and correct the problem.
When you slow down, take a deep breath, assess the nature of the situation, then act on it, you’ll find that you will make better decisions and reach far more desirable results in the long run.
~Delilah Smith
Caliber Virtual Services
Delilah:
It’s truly a pleasure to have you stop by and lend your comments on the blog. Insights from other VA’s, freelancers and entrepreneurs, will truly help readers of our blog get the most from our articles. I truly appreciate the time you took to stop by and give advice!
Shilonda Downing
Virtual Work Team LLC
I too have rushed to fix a problem with disastrous results. Being a freelancer sometimes when you are invited to interview for a specific project/task you get so excited and need the work that you neglect to check the feedback about the company or individual that has offered to interview you. That being said I should have looked before I leaped and probably would have avoided the challenges that I faced working for the wrong type of company. Always, Always, Always think and contemplate your decision before you make a rush to ‘fix’ it.
Barb:
Thanks for your comments and don’t feel bad. I too have made “rush” decisions and that’s why I wrote the post. My rush decisions have been with making a new hire, that I later regretted. I then had to scale back the persons duties and try to figure a way to “fix” it or transition them out in a nice way 🙂 We all live and learn, so thanks so much for sharing and we’ve definitely all got to take more time and stop making “rush” business decisions.
Shilonda Downing
Virtual Work Team LLC